Kemal kept me with him more than an hour, I think. Each time he tried to touch me I shrank away from him. It amused him, for he would laugh and clap his hands, as if very pleased. “I will die first,” I said each time, “unless you save my family.”
I had begun to lose hope; to think Kemal was but playing with me. I could hardly keep my tears back, yet I did not want to weep for I knew he would be displeased. Then, suddenly, he appeared to have made up his mind. He arose and looked down at me.
“Very well. The bargain is made. I will protect your relatives. I prefer a willing woman to a sulky one. We will go to-morrow and bring them.”
I would have been happy, even in my sacrifice, had it not been that Kemal Effendi smiled as he said this—that cruel, wicked smile. I would have believed in him if he had not smiled. But I felt as plain as if it were spoken to me that behind that smile was some wicked thought.
I begged him to go with me then to bring my people before it was too late. He said it would not be too late in the morning; that he would go with me after sunrise; that I need have no further fears. When he left the room the woman who had spoken to me earlier came in to me. She took me into the haremlik, or women’s quarters, where there were many other women.
I think the harem women would have been sorry for me had they dared. They tried to cheer me. They asked much about our religion, and why Armenians would die rather than adopt the religion of the Turks. I could not talk to them, because I could think only of the morning—whether I would be in time—and wonder what could be behind that smile of the Effendi’s.
They put me in a small room, hardly as large as an American closet. They told me an Imam would come the next day to take my oath.
They did not know the Effendi had promised to save my relatives and bring them to the house.
I had not been alone in my room very long when a pretty odalik, a young slave girl, slipped silently through the curtained door and took my hand in hers. She was a Syrian, she told me, whose father had sold her when she was very young. She had been sent from Smyrna to the house of Kemal. She was the favorite slave of the Effendi. She wanted to tell me that if I needed some one to confide in when her master had made me his slave, too, I could trust her. She said she was supposed to have become Mohammedan, but that secretly she was still Christian. She did not know many prayers she explained, for she was so young when her father had been compelled to sell her. She wanted me to teach her new ones.
It was so comforting to have some one to whom I could talk through the long hours of waiting until sunrise. I told the little odalik I had promised to be a Moslem only to save my mother and sisters and brothers. I told her what Kemal had promised, how he had smiled and how I feared something I could not explain.